Mulberries are here in full force. We have two trees which produce a staggered harvest of fruit. Our really tall one (50 ft high) ripens first, with the smaller, more shaded tree picking up where the other one leaves off.

Mostly we just pick and eat God’s bountiful fruit, squishing the overripe berries between our toes as we go along. The heavy, low branches are for the kids and the taller branches are for me and my husband. This year my son is more into climbing the mulberry tree than picking it, but my daughter is making up for his scavenging disinterest.

Mulberries grow down in the Gainseville area. Maybe we will plant some mulberry trees, or maybe we will end up in a house with a few already planted. As of now our housing situation is a little unstable. We were under contract for a ready made box of a house but that fell through. The appraisal was below the contracted price and the seller would not budge. So, no financing, no house. I have to admit that the appraisal was a real lowball; the bank used an out of town appraiser unfamiliar with the market.

We are working on figuring out a new housing arrangement. Maybe we will buy, maybe we will rent. This situation plays to my karmic anxieties of strongly needing a sense of home, despite my other karmic tendencies to move around a lot. The two things, being at odds with one another, tend to make life expensive and our bank account sparse.

But, in the mean time at least, we are very rich in fruit. If mulberries were pennies, we would have at least five hundred bucks!

I’ve already made a light Mulberry Syrup and am working on picking more for conserve. It is a slow going process of one for my bucket, one, two, three for my daughter’s tummy. Although time consuming, nothing feels more wholesome than heading out to the mulberry tree to pick fruit in the early morning as the dew soaks my ankles and the owls still “hoo.” My daughter eats and my son climbs. Our hands stained purple and our mouths sweetened by fruit, there is no whining, only peace. That is, until the lower branches are picked clean and my daughter starts cranking her whiner up.